The Game of Silence
by Eternal-Night-Ride
Summary: When they talked, sometimes it just fell so wrong. Everything collapsed. So since recently, there was a new rule. They were supposed to play a very long game. A game of silence.
1. The Game of Silence

**The Game of Silence**

* * *

And I've lost who I am and I can't understand

Why my heart is so broken, rejecting your love

Without, love gone wrong, lifeless words carry on

But I know, all I know is the end's beginning…

* * *

When they talked, sometimes it just fell so wrong. Everything collapsed. So since recently, there was a new rule. They were supposed to play a very long game. It was a game she played occasionally anyway, anytime their conversations curled into so much strain that they snapped.

"What, you're not talking to me?" He'd asked in aggravation. "How am I supposed to know what you want if you don't talk?"

Then she'd walk away.

However the game was unfair when one of the players was unaware of the rules. One day, she finally laid it out.

"What do you mean shush?"

The gently placed fingers on his lips would completely knock the arguments from his throat. Like the wind from his lungs the day he realized that her smile was enough to make him stutter.

That was the start of the game. It was a simple enough procedure, he supposed. On those days, only the breeze would speak for them. In the park, as they walked with their fingers clasped tightly around each other's. The footsteps echoing on the pavement. While they would eat in the restaurant, the sounds of the other patrons' conversations filling their table. At home, on his couch while they were watching an old sci-fi movie with awful special effects and hokey acting. Her hand would reach out, some days, and lightly brush the bangs from his eyes. The tentative warmth on his skin would always make him feel like something was breaking.

Sometimes what broke was the silence. To lose in this game was to break the silence. Once they engaged in conversation again, all the things that had been put in suspended animation would shatter into a thousand pieces.

"But why aren't we-?" He'd try, before realizing he'd caved again. All he would receive is her quiet gaze.

More often than not, he lost. Maybe his personality tended towards the brash, the obnoxious and the rambunctious. Too overconfident, overeager. Perhaps just as equally too passionate. It was what made him the perfect bratty hero. Like those comic book characters that he enjoyed reading about. There was one thing he was sure about, that personality type was not cut out to coincide with the romantic hero. It probably didn't help that he enjoyed attention. Just something that was inherent in him. Perhaps it was his parents' extremely lax guardianship, bordering on dismissive, that made him that way. Perhaps he inhaled too much fictional heroes from the media that he enjoyed that imprinted on him the same desire to be noticed, acknowledged just the way they did. That gave him the habit of looking for attention in all the wrong ways, in all the wrong places. This all boiled over to a conclusion of being a very bad player at the game that they'd instigated.

He'd complain. And complain too well. His best friend called it his usual whiny voice. He'd demand more from her that even he was unable to give. His cousin always spoke about compromise, the act of giving that came with taking. There was a distinct possibility, as much as he would deny so, that he was too immature for the very concept of it. Or perhaps, deep inside, they knew that there was always an imbalance in their relationship to begin with.

The game that she had formulated was her reconciliation of that fact. As she was finally growing into the idea of it, settling into it comfortably as if it was the most perfect cocoon that held her feelings for him, he was breaking. Maybe he was ridiculously immature in ways that even he couldn't excuse, that even he couldn't cover up in the many declarations of his position as the savior of the whole entire universe, but there was a breaking point.

Deep where he refused to acknowledge, maybe the stupid teenage puppy feelings were growing into something far more difficult to handle. As old as his soul was from fighting too many battles to preserve the safety and well-being of the universe, a part of him was still overwhelmingly young. That part of him couldn't help but circumvent the rules of the game and always inevitably cause him to lose. Perhaps he shouldn't have played at all.

When he watched her, that acceptance, that smile. He knew.

Autumn leaves falling all around her form - the only thing colored like the season of spring - her eyes were closed and a small, meek smile graced her features. She was engaged completely in their usual game. That was when he finally absorbed the truth that she was getting used to the conditions of their circumstance. Like a prisoner calling jail home. They played the game because she was finally happy, content in the generosity she always shared.

She was always only going to be second. Never a priority beyond what he could eventually lend, every now and again. As the watch on his arm blared in alarm and his fingers unlocked from hers, she didn't hold on.

The only farewell was an unreadable smile. In silent agony. And it was okay.

…_I could not love thee, dear, so much,_

_Loved I not honor more…_

There were days that he had to admit that he was just an insensitive jerk, just obstinate and clueless. Other days, he sincerely wanted to be everyone's hero. Even hers. Through the hurricane of imperfection that was their relationship, there were days even he was sick of his own inconsideration. There were times when he couldn't deal with the situation, even more so than she did, because she did matter enough that he wouldn't actually enjoy seeing her sit by quietly in her own misery.

Exhaustion from him could set in too. After all, he did realize the unfairness of it all. If nothing else, he genuinely believed in justice and repercussions to ill acts.

Then he reset the universe. Other mistakes were just genuine mistakes. This one, on the other hand, was the most intentional mistake he coaxed to commit. This was the one and only day he couldn't consider himself a hero, even in the well-meaning attempts to save the universe. Today, she was first priority.

At the edge of knowledge, he still played the game. Even when she passed him by, looking at him in outright confusion about what he's on about - wondering who he even was, he liked to believe they were still playing the game.

With a smile, just a crack and a twitch too miserable, he would think: he was winning.

* * *

There's a light, there's a sun taking all shattered ones

To the place we belong and his love will conquer all…

* * *

**A/N: **Lyrics at the start and end are from Shattered by Trading Yesterday. Inspired by "So Long and Thanks For All The Smoothies."


	2. The Game of Waiting

**The Game of Waiting**

_'Cause I threw in the obvious,  
Just to see what I've got  
Behind the eyes of a fallen angel  
Eyes of a tragedy..._

The problem with being a thinking man nowadays is that he had begun to act that way even outside of his line of work. That particular mentality was fine when he was trying to set a trap to catch the many enemies that always attempt to kill him and very few had bested him in being conniving, except for perhaps Aggregor. Embarrassingly, he was overstepped every move he made in an attempt to get the upper hand. In retrospect, he was perhaps at his weakest mental capacity at the time because of the increased aggression and impulsivity fueled by the new version of his watch.

Though with the advent of a new, apparently better weapon - that's questionable, he was returned to form when it came to planning. He was even forced more often than not to become even more ingenious and creative because it never gave him what he wanted. And it timed out inconsistently.

So this actually pushed a progression in his thinking, and he had become a man who waited. Like she was prone to do back when she still knew who he was.

Due to their circumstances, they had also recently become prone to avoid each other. Him, in the knowledge that she wasn't supposed to know him all that well past being her classmate who she barely spoke to. Her, because there was a coldness about her and a suspicion and a deep-seated fear perhaps from the fact that she had so much of her experiences ripped from her in the hard reset of the universe and looking at him equated to being as uncomfortable as staring at a dead man - a dead memory.

So he had grown accustomed to simply playing the game of waiting. He played with all the other beautiful girls that he stumbled across, except for her. Specifically not her.

The game went on as follows: he was charming, he flirted, he smiled boyishly, as one did when you wanted to play the role of the attracted. More often than not, oh, he very much was. They usually were just as attracted. But the edge of the game was the silence. Always in silence did one truly realise the extent of how deep the berth of that absence was. Like some strange self-propagating confirmation bias initiated by the underhanded and the cruel. Which he had become prone to do. Not that he was saying it was a good thing of himself.

For the most part, they danced along. An equal smile, a bounce of great words between each other to suggest some kind of tension. Then he would wait. Always for the same thing: that kind of cold, quiet anger of someone who would slowly realise that he was pretending to be alright. That those eyes that he looked back into would be offended that he even tried to hide through a veil of security, because she saw right through him. Saw the hurt, the difficulty and the struggle and didn't want him hurting the man that she cared for by going through it alone. Instead, he was always met with the same kind of blank, continuously flirtatious smile. Just in turn he continued to smile, always being the celebrity chick magnet that everyone knew he was.

Turning to his new partner, who he was starting to get quite used to and actually genuinely like, he would ask if he'd have a chance with the new girl. Said partner would just look blankly, somewhat cluelessly, at him as if he had grown a second head. He'd laugh to himself because that response was always priceless. Rook was quickly becoming a great part of this team, they made a great tandem.

The game of waiting was one of the longest games that he'd ever played, one that he didn't even enjoy very much but one he was slowly getting used to. It was even a game he hadn't noticed that he played - but pretty much reinforced a truth about him upon the realization that it existed: that he was a jerk. But that he didn't care all that much.

_...Apparently  
Nothing at all  
You don't see me  
You don't see me at all._

* * *

A/N: Song lyrics from 3 Libras by A Perfect Circle.


	3. As The World Falls Down

**As The World Falls Down**

_...I'll paint you mornings of gold  
I'll spin you valentine evenings  
__Though we're strangers 'til now__  
We're choosing the path between the stars  
I'll leave my love between the stars…_

The universes shattered around them, like in a domino effect. One after another, slowly falling down taking the next one down with it as it fizzled out.

The team was struggling against something that, at this point, had become strong enough to be practically invincible. They had allowed this to continue on for too long. Coughing up blood, perhaps even half his lung, his knees quivered in effort as he hovered over her and her group of friends. They were civilians. Just civilians.

As a Vaxasaurian, he doubted his words or his actions would make much sense to her. No matter how much it triggered his memory, there was nothing for her to search in her own.

"Please," he said in a whisper. "Please remember me."

He was so exhausted, he could feel his consciousness leaving him like water ebbing, trickling away. The Omnitrix finally gave out and he felt his shift in size and form less than he did the weight of his eyelids. From the edge of hearing, he could hear Rook actually calling out to him in panic, in warning, of an oncoming attack directed his way. But he was too weak, too distracted. Barely able to register the fact that his position was actually defended, he only saw a glimpse of pink light reflect on her pale face, on the tears falling down from the side of her eyes.

A delicate hand reached out to him - but she was held back by one of her friends, the pretty blonde one who played tennis just like her.

At some point his knees finally gave out and he could hear the pattering of feet getting farther and farther. They were running away. It just made sense, they were in the line of fire. Just civilians. Nonsensically, this was killing him more than the pain his body was registering from the battering he had taken from the enemy. He could hear the concerned voices of a cousin, a best friend, and a new partner calling out.

Eyes closed, he was surprised when he felt arms wrap around him protectively. The sobs from this someone else was shaking him.

"I don't remember you," she cried quietly, desperately. "I don't remember you."

Even as she feared him and distrusted him, her arms could still comfortably wrap around him. The mind may have forgotten but it seemed, even in a world that didn't make sense, she would always be there to pick up the pieces of all the things he'd broken. After handling all the shards of who they were, the memory of her hands being lacerated - the scars of their tearing - remained.

…_As the pain sweeps through  
Makes no sense for you  
Every thrill is gone, wasn't too much fun at all  
But I'll be there for you  
As the world falls down... _

* * *

A/N: Lyrics from As the World Falls Down by David Bowie, the soundtrack from Labyrinth


End file.
